Motor Vehicles Act, 1939

The Motor Vehicles Act, 1939 is Pakistan's original federal motor vehicles law; the extract notes that its earlier chapters (I-VI) were repealed for the former Province of West Pakistan by the Provincial Motor Vehicles Ordinance, 1965, leaving mainly Chapter VII (vehicles temporarily entering or leaving Pakistan), Chapter VIII (third-party insurance) and Section 125 (driving uninsured vehicles) still in force as federal provisions.

Section 92 lets the Federal Government make rules for motor vehicles temporarily taken out of or brought into Pakistan — covering travel passes and authorisations for people driving abroad, and the conditions under which foreign-registered vehicles brought in temporarily may be used in Pakistan.

Chapter VIII, the surviving core of the Act, requires third-party motor insurance. Section 94 makes it an offence to use, or let someone else use, a motor vehicle in a public place unless there is a valid insurance policy covering that use, with an exception for government-owned vehicles and other vehicles specifically exempted by the Federal or Provincial Government. Section 95 sets out what an insurance policy must cover to satisfy this requirement — it must be issued by an authorised insurer (or a permitted co-operative society) and must cover liability for death or bodily injury caused by the vehicle's use in a public place in Pakistan. Sections 96-110 (only partly detailed in the extract) address insurers' duty to satisfy court judgments against insured persons, third parties' rights against insurers if the insured person becomes insolvent, cancellation and surrender of insurance certificates, and reporting of accidents. Section 111 gives the Federal Government power to make supporting rules on these insurance matters.

Section 125, in Chapter IX, sets the penalty for driving an uninsured vehicle: imprisonment for up to three months, or a fine of up to five hundred rupees, or both. Given how old this Act is and how heavily it has been amended and partially repealed (footnotes reference changes in 1947, 1949, 1953, 1960, 1975 and 1981), and that most of its substantive vehicle-licensing and traffic provisions have since been replaced by provincial motor vehicle laws, readers should treat the five-hundred-rupee fine and other details here as historical and check current provincial traffic law for what actually applies today.